With eye on Pakistan, BJP unveils five-elixir foreign policy formula

The BJP announced on Friday a Panchamrit or five elixirs formula on foreign policy and pitched for peaceful engagements with Pakistan to gain the neighbour’s cooperation to root out terrorism in the region.

The BJP announced on Friday a Panchamrit or five elixirs formula on foreign policy and pitched for peaceful engagements with Pakistan to gain the neighbour’s cooperation to root out terrorism in the region.

A resolution passed at the BJP’s national executive meeting here says the Narendra Modi government has responded firmly and appropriately to provocations on the border, yet the party is committed to “building peaceful and friendly relations with Pakistan, predicated on an end to terrorism”.

The imprint of the party’s ideological mentor, the RSS, is clearly visible as the document studiously avoided calling the country India, favouring the Sangh-suited Bharat instead.

The pillars of Panchamrit are: “Samman – dignity and honour; Samvad – greater engagement and dialogue; Samriddhi – shared prosperity; Suraksha – regional and global security; and Sanskritievam Sabhyata – cultural and civilisational linkages.”Peace, however, had no room when the BJP took on the Congress for its relentless attack on the Modi government’s new land law. Party chief Amit Shah fired the first salvo, asking the Congress to search for its leader — referring to Rahul Gandhi who is on a vacation — instead of finding faults with the NDA government.

“You are finding faults, which do not exist, with us and holding us responsible for them. Instead of doing this, the Opposition party should find its leader,” he said while inaugurating the national executive meeting.

He asked party workers to take the Opposition head-on over the land bill. “We have not taken any anti-farmer step. Whatever changes were being brought to the land law will benefit the farmer.”

Shah unveiled a strategy to integrate the party's cadre-base with social causes taken up by the Modi government, hoping that it would help the BJP remain in power for two decades.

His message was in line with Modi’s advice to party office bearers on Thursday night where he invoked Mahatma Gandhi who had involved people in social causes to create a political support base for the Congress then.

“The BJP has a strong internal democracy. We have to convert these 10 crore members into workers of the party,” Shah said.